


Sightseeing

by nonplussed



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21873670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonplussed/pseuds/nonplussed
Summary: Luna and Gentiana go on a roadtrip
Relationships: Lunafreya Nox Fleuret/Gentiana
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14
Collections: FFXV Holiday Gift Exchange 2019





	Sightseeing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ghoulkink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulkink/gifts).



> Spoilers for chapter 9 of the game onwards (if anyone still worries about game spoilers?), and also for The Dawn of the Future.

In Gralea, Lunafreya says, “let’s go on a road trip, just the two of us.” Gentiana has her eyes closed, but she can hear the faint smile in Lunafreya’s voice, and feel the steel of her mind. “What do you think?”

“Of course, my Lady,” she murmurs, once she finds her words. Lunafreya is the only one who ever asks her opinion, and all the words that Gentiana has in the mortal tongue of this age have been a gift from her Oracle. It is a crude and imprecise language, fitting of the crude, buzzing gnats she can feel outside this room, the Imperial advisors and guards that constantly hover around the Oracle and her Companion, whose minds are awhirl with the petty and mundane and—

Lunafreya touches her hand, the clear golden ringing of her presence bringing Gentiana back into her mortal body. “Shall we? It will make a nice change of pace, to be out of Niflheim,” she muses, as though it is only the weather or the food that has grown stale. And not the way the Imperials keep the Oracle like a pet, leashed and heeled, trumpeting her as a saviour against the dark, ignoring her when she tries to warn them that the long night yet advances. Not the way the Imperials have brought them back to Gralea four times this past year, and the way Gentiana can feel herself growing more frozen and furious with each visit, caught up inexorably in the hibernating beat of her heart, out in the desert—

Lunafreya squeezes her hand again. Gentiana’s mind returns to her Oracle. “Follow me?”

There is only ever one answer to that. “Of course, my Lady.”

The Oracle leaves her room, her Companion a shadow unobserved behind her. One of their minders asks where they are going, and Lunafreya makes agreeable noises about one of the estate’s balcony gardens. Once there, Lunafreya knocks him out with a single, precise blow. Then she takes off her heels, hikes up her dress, and begins scaling down the manor walls. They are four floors up, Gentiana notices, her thoughts glacier-slow, and wonders if she ought to be worried or amused. But before she decides, Lunafreya is already on the ground and tugging her away. They reach the garage, where a man is waiting for them, car keys in hand, devotion in his mind. With Lunafreya holding her hand, Gentiana is just present enough to be curious; who is this man? Before she can think better of it, she opens her eyes, and _looks_ —his life is but a blink in time, marked only where it’s been touched by the Oracle’s grace, and he is a student and minor Gralean official and a deliveryman and a child and a father and—

She barely notices Lunafreya pulling her into the car, and then driving them away. She closes her eyes, concentrating on the beat of her heart, reverberating through her corporeal form. It beats. And beats. The sixth beat is fainter, and the tenth is but a shiver. After that, the only heartbeat she can feel is the mortal one in her chest. And her Oracle’s heartbeat beside her, if she listens for it.

Lunafreya’s hand is still warm in hers. Startlingly warm—she finally remembers to draw herself back into the boundaries of her mortal form, allowing the air around her to heat back up again. Lunafreya’s hand doesn’t move, even though she must have been freezing. “You could open your eyes now,” she only says, mildly.

Gentiana turns her head to the window beside her, and opens her eyes. The glass is opaque with frost. She clears it with a touch, and watches a herd of anak meander through the brush. There is something oddly pleasing about them, how large they loom out over the landscape, yet leaving behind not even a footprint on the flow of fate. They drive past the herd, and still the land stretches out before them, an unmarked road the only sign of mankind. An image comes to her, clear and sudden as a vision; the two of them driving onwards endlessly, winding through the interstices of human civilisation, with her eyes open and drinking in the thousand shades of brown and green and blue, watching creatures great and small passing by, immaterial but for their physical presence. With Lunafreya a brilliant golden peal of bells beside her, humming quietly and a little off key.

They must have left Gralea some way behind them. She idly wonders how long it will take the Imperials to notice that they’ve lost the Oracle. Lunafreya surely has a plan for that eventuality, but Gentiana doesn’t intend to ask. She’s only meant to watch, after all, to carry the words of her siblings to humanity, and not to send word back.

Lunafreya lets go of her hand to make a left turn. “We’ll head to Altissia, first.” Gralea is a long way from Altissia. Gentiana turns to look at her in surprise, and can’t help but _look_ , can’t help seeing Lunafreya at seven, fifteen, twenty-three, marching unafraid and ever onwards to the ominous pulse of a destiny that—

She closes her eyes.

# # #

In Altissia, First Secretary Camelia Claustra speaks to Lunafreya in sharp, unimpressed tones, belaying the vicious glee in her mind at the thought of pulling one over Niflheim. She makes them cautious offers and measured compromises, promising nothing, but with each word exchanged their mutual respect grows. But at the end of their negotiation, Gentiana can hear a little more with gold streaked through her, and both she and Lunafreya leave satisfied.

Then they’re leaving the city again, as quickly as they came. Lunafreya is in some sort of disguise, though Gentiana doesn’t know what it looks like. It amuses her to imagine Lunafreya in some sort of silly wig.

“I’ve got big sunglasses and a fake moustache, as well,” Lunafreya laughs, as they ride a gondola back toward border control. So of course Gentiana cannot help but raise a hand to Lunafreya’s face, fingertips grazing her upper lip, smooth and definitely unmarred by fake hair, and the hitch in her breath is almost scalding hot on Gentiana’s fingers.

“You shouldn’t lie to the Astrals,” she murmurs.

“Why shouldn’t I, when they lie to me?” She feels Lunafreya’s whisper of a laugh on her fingers more than she hears it, another wash of heat. The world continues on around them, as though the Oracle and the Astrals’ Messenger haven’t just blasphemed like it’s little more than a shared joke. Gentiana aches with something she cannot name. She wonders what Luna’s smile looks like, right in this moment.

She yearns to do—something, but the gondola comes to a stop, and then they are hurrying through border control. The bored customs officer calls Lunafreya by a false name, and his eyes slide over Gentiana entirely. There is a boat waiting for them outside, and just like that, they’re on the way to one of the many islands that dot Accordo. When they settle in for the night at a run-down motel, they hear over the radio that the Niflheim Empire has so kindly arranged a prolonged tour for the Oracle to visit the various islands of Accordo, to bless its people and heal them of Starscourge. What a victory for bilateral relations, the official announcement proclaims.

“Good,” says Lunafreya, “Now Niflheim will think I’m hiding in Altissia.” A silver chime of presence arrives in the room, followed by a woof. “Oh, hello Umbra!” For the next fifteen minutes, Gentiana soaks in his overflowing delight as Lunafreya lavishes him with belly rubs. Finally, she hears Lunafreya get up, and then the scratching of pen on paper. She must write a message back to the True King, because Umbra gives one last woof goodbye, and then is on his way.

“There’ll be a similar message going out in Lucis, soon. With luck, it’ll keep Niflheim from being able to search too openly, if they don’t want to embarrass themselves by appearing to have lost us. If we’re careful, we could travel freely for a few weeks. Maybe even a month or two.” Lunafreya sounds satisfied with herself, and justifiably so. Gentiana knew she had been planning something like this for months now, had watched her perform her blessings with increasing discontent over the few privileged and politically expedient people that the Empire brought to her, had listened to the strained quality of her silences with the empire always eavesdropping. Gentiana had not known the full shape of her plan—had tried not to—but had still gleaned just enough to portend.

“The Empire’s reach is long, and its will implacable,” she had said in the old tongue, for a prophecy had to be spoken.

“Perhaps,” Lunafreya had replied, undaunted, “but I can certainly delay their gratification.”

Now, Gentiana only says, “a game of coeurl and chickatrice.”

Lunafreya laughs, and there’s a rustle that is the sound of her undressing for bed. “Yes, but the coeurl may yet find that it faces a basilisk instead.”

Yes, Gentiana thinks, as she listens to Lunafreya settling into sleep, it may indeed. Her Oracle is no longer the sweet, impossibly brave child who had once almost bitten her tongue, trying to speak the words of their covenant. She’d seen the possibilities in her then. But now, with her hand resting on Lunafreya’s brow, she can sense the shape of the woman she has become, in this place and time. There is such determination, and courage, and capacity for love—

Gentiana pulls her hand back. There is a stirring of need in her mostly mortal chest. She breathes it out, her breath misting the air. Ice crystals climb up the legs of the chair she sits in, by the bed. She smooths a hand over the sheets, leaving it pleasantly cool for humans, despite the muggy summer night. Then, with her eyes closed, Gentiana settles in to wait for morning.

# # #

In Accordo, and then in Lucis, the Oracle spends her days spreading her blessings across the land. She moves from one hamlet to the next, never staying longer than a few days, travelling alone but for a single companion. While she never enters a big city, word of her charity spreads there too, where it is received like a children’s tale; warmly, indulgently, mostly unconcerned. But then, the lives of cityfolk are not touched by Starscourge the way that those living close to the land are. When Niflheim accepts credit for the Oracle’s holy quest, they only nod and move on with their lives.

But outside the cities, the people know better, and come to love the Oracle with an almost fervent devotion.

Gentiana isn’t surprised by the devotion; Lunafreya’s voice thrums with grace and sincerity, and she brings with her salvation from a curse many had been resigned to die under. It also doesn’t hurt that Lunafreya always implies that she’s depending on their kindness to stay out from under the Imperial thumb; there’s nothing most Accordans or Lucians like more than foiling the Empire’s wishes. Combine that with her beauty, and it’s unsurprising that she is met with such adoration.

No, what surprises Gentiana is how that adoration worries her. Love is so often a harbinger for foolishness and sorrow.

And indeed, it is often that love that vexes. It takes the hard work of many hands, and not inconsiderable good luck, to remain outside of the Empire’s reach. Yet on more than one occasion, it is a photo posted thoughtlessly to social media with a fervent caption that puts the Imperials on their tail. But with Gentiana there to warn her, Lunafreya manages to get them both away each time. Perhaps her siblings might argue that it falls dangerously near to interference, if they knew. But surely, she is allowed to warn the Oracle against trying to heal those tainted irreversibly with Starscourge; as the Messenger, it is her duty to instruct the Oracle on the limits of her power. It is mere coincidence that the only beings so tainted are Magitek Troopers, and that Gentiana gives this instruction the moment she senses them approaching from some distance away, and that Lunafreya takes such instruction as a sign to leave.

In this way, Lunafreya leads her from village to village, and she follows dutifully behind, eyes closed. The murmurs of those who praise and beseech her Oracle fade into each other, and she can hardly remember if they are in Duscae or Vissithia, or how many weeks and months they’ve been travelling. Instead, she marks time by each new experience she has. It has been centuries and millennia since she came into being, and also two decades and change, so it astonishes her that there are moments that can still feel new. Perhaps if she were entirely awake, instead of being half in slumber out in Niflheim’s desert, she would not think so. But in this time and place, she is only Gentiana, the Oracle’s Companion, and her heart doesn’t feel shuttered away and frozen, but oddly weightless, entirely her own.

So she marks time in the moments where she has her eyes open, taking in the changing hues of a golden-red sunset, or the burst of sour-sweetness on her tongue from an overripe kupoberry, or the absurd majesty of two catoblepas at the height of mating season. Lunafreya had laughed irrepressibly when they were forced to pull over, that last time, and that’s new and glorious too—she had rarely let herself betray much depth of emotion, back in Niflheim.

And though Gentiana has been watching over her Oracle for almost her whole life, there are moments with Lunafreya that are new as well. Hearing Lunafreya sing to herself when they make camp at night (and stopping mid-way through a verse to look up the lyrics, heaving a sigh at the poor internet connection, then making up her own lyrics to the rest of it). Watching her take down a half dozen hobgoblins with her trident in hand, graceful as a swan and ten times as vicious, slivers of ice glittering around her (Gentiana isn’t allowed to interfere and help outright, but she is certainly allowed to defend herself, if a daemon seems about to harm _her,_ and so she keeps a precise four feet behind Lunafreya in the presence of any threat). Listening to Lunafreya gossip about her petitioners, laugh about whatever it was the True King had written to her through Umbra, or worry openly about her brother. Each moment is new, and cherished; all the more so for knowing it will soon come to an end. She doesn’t need to look at Lunafreya to see it—she knows, has known since she forged the covenant with her Oracle but a blink in time ago, and approved of the full glory of her destiny, a brilliant flash of gold in the unending path of time, more than most mortals can achieve in far fewer years—

But the end is yet to come. In any case, what is a year? In the backwaters of Lucis and Accordo, hundreds of miles from the ancient pulse of her heart, a year does not feel quite so short, if she can mark out time from moment to precious moment.

With Lunafreya sleeping beside her, a hand tucked in hers, Gentiana looks out the window at the stars, but doesn’t see them. Instead, she counts each breath Lunafreya takes, and reflects on the strangeness that is humanity, that it can make a single night feel like forever.

# # #

She had known it would come to an end, but not like this. No, no it can’t, not like this. This is not how her Oracle dies.

It’s _not_. She knows it is not, she reminds herself that she does. In the thousand possible futures that she had once seen of her Oracle, not a single one has her dying from the rogue shot of an MT, of all things.

It does not stop her from freezing the entire squadron, and a good mile of summer grove along with it. Destiny convulses around her, but she grimly ignores it transporting Lunafreya’s unmoving body back to their van. No, not unmoving—she can feel Lunafreya’s rabbiting heart and shallow gasps under her hands. And also the slick warmth of blood. She opens her eyes and _looks,_ and all she sees is blood, blood and death. She reaches for her power to thrust it into Lunafreya’s pale, shuddering body, but while ice has always come easy as thought, healing seems almost out of reach. Furious, she pulls harder, and feels the first pulse of her heart shuddering through her like the crack of a glacier. Yes, fury and cold, how well she knows these feelings, how has she forgotten them? How dare these daemon spawn try to hurt her Lunafreya. How dare Niflheim try to cage her and control her, when she shines brighter than their entire city. How dare these _mortals_ try to lay hands on what is _hers_ , with their petty ambitions and puny—

The blood stops spilling over, freezing into a lattice of shimmering red on Lunafreya’s chest, absurdly ornamental. But it’s still not enough, she still sees death, sees how some of Lunafreya’s potential futures splinter off at this point, death in the hands of an unnamed, unworthy _puppet_. She wrenches herself open further, drawing on a force as irrefutable as winter, and as her heartbeat pulses through her again, she leans down, presses her lips onto Lunafreya’s, and lets her power rush through.

It’s as though time itself has frozen. Nothing moves, except for her power pouring through her, and her heart pounding frantically. Finally, beneath her lips, she feels a gasp, a warmth that she instantly misses when Luna turns away to cough. “My Lady,” she says, relief almost painful, and even as Luna shivers and coughs, she sees Luna smiling at her, a week from now, a month from now, a—she closes her eyes. “My Lady.”

“Gentiana.” Lunafreya’s voice wavers, but when she feels a hand on her cheek, hot as a brand, she knows that waver is not weakness, but a ferocious joy. “My Gentiana, you saved me. You chose to save me.”

“My Lady—” Soft, searing hot lips stop her words, and then they are kissing, truly kissing. It’s like waking up all over again, like rising up to the call of holy covenant, at the wish and will of her lady. And it’s like kissing, nothing more than kissing, warm and wet and a trembling delight, to feel Lunfreya’s hands running through her hair, to feel her shudder under Gentiana’s fingers—something she’d forgotten she knew how to do, a primal joy awoken after centuries of slumber.

“My Gentiana,” says Lunafreya again, soft and unbearably warm, “I know you love me. Open your eyes.” And, helpless but to obey, Gentiana does.

She sees her own hands first, a translucent blue, resting on Lunafreya’s shoulders. Then she looks up, and _sees_ her. Her Lunafreya. Glorious and endlessly kind and dying, dying, dying.

Her Lunafreya is shrouded in destiny and death, death a thousand different ways. If not an MT today, then a red giant in the future. And if not in the hands of a common daemon, then in the hands of that pitiful, corrupted soul who is now little more than a vessel for Starscourge, taking her life one way or another. And if Gentiana forces them away from that path, then the Draconian himself interferes, that _withered, Scourge-soaked_ _wretch—_

Lunafreya runs a gentle finger along her cheek, and it comes away covered in frost, trembling a little as she shivers. With effort, Gentiana tries to pull herself away, pull herself inwards, but even as the ice glittering on her skin melts away, Lunafreya tightens a hand in her hair, and says, “no.”

“My Lady—”

“Luna.”

“Luna,” and then, the words spilling from her lips unbidden, “my Luna.”

Luna’s smile in that moment is as glorious as the lives of all the Oracles come before her. She runs a hand through Gentiana’s hair, and the sight of her own black hair twined around those pale fingers is a sight just as glorious. Her heart pounds, and somewhere in Gralea, the desert begins to thaw. “My Luna,” Gentiana says again, “you’re mine”. And right before her eyes, she sees a new future spiralling outward. 

“Am I?” Luna laughs, and moves to remove her hand, but Gentiana reaches out to hold her in place. Then she brings that hand to her lips. She sees Luna shiver again, and not just from the cold.

No, she refuses to lose this. Not even if she has to remake destiny itself. “None shall have you but me. Your life, your destiny.”

Luna makes a sound that’s half a laugh, half a gasp, and entirely delightful. But she doesn’t misunderstand, and as her eyes dart away, her lips turn down, and she says, “the prophecy…”

“The prophecy is now void. Your covenant is with _me._ ” The Starscourge still needs to be purged from this land. But she refuses to let Luna bear the burden of that immolation. A tiny fractal of a future, barely formed, grows clear in her eyes. Yes, a willing sacrifice is needed, and love, and a conduit for the power of the crystal and the ring. But her Luna is strong enough to live through it. Gentiana sees her, dazzling in her defiance in the face of the First of the Astrals, with the old and the new blood of the King of Kings arrayed behind her, drawing the Starscourge from the land. And Gentiana will keep her alive, even at the cost of her power and half her soul. Even if it means forcing her siblings from this realm. She is the Glacian, Frostbearer and Harbinger; her word is prophecy, truth, and she has forged a covenant.

“My covenant is with you, Gentiana.” Luna kisses her again, long and deep, a promise of things both sacred and carnal. Gentiana can’t help but close her eyes once more, surrendering to Luna’s passion, soaking in her love.

But the next time she opens her eyes, there will be a reckoning. She will guide her Luna to it. And she will be watching, eagerly, every step of the way.

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to my beta, [ghosthouses](/users/ghosthouses/), for your excellent comments and cheerleading! You're the best!


End file.
